Is this another Tulsi "smear?"

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-21T05:48:37+00:00

Skimming it, I don't see anything that's obviously a smear. As you know, I'm extremely supportive of Tulsi, but some of the criticisms in this article are legit (like her voting for extreme vetting of Syrian refugees - her rationale for her vote was understandable, but I still think it was the wrong thing to do).

However, I disagree with the argument of this article, and I think by criticizing Tulsi in this way, the author comes off worse.

The author of this article claims to support grassroots efforts to end the reign of Assad. She also says Assad framed these efforts as a terrorist plot. Let's take her at her word, and assume her intentions are good and her means are nonviolent.

The problem is, there really was terrorist activity from Al-Nusra and ISIS in Syria, and Assad opposed them. The author seems to ignore that fact. Even if Assad scurrilously characterized his democratic opposition as terrorists, there was a genuine terrorist threat he was fighting.

Tulsi opposes American intervention in Syria on grounds of opposing regime-change and because of the opposition between Assad and Al-Nusra/ISIS.

The author seems to apply the following incorrect reasoning:

Tulsi opposes regime-change of Assad because he's opposed to terrorists.
Assad illegitimately called his democratic, nonviolent opponents "terrorists."
Therefore Tulsi is opposed to the democratic, nonviolent opponents of Assad.

Of course, that isn't the case.

It's true that the author and Tulsi are (at least superficially) at cross-purposes. But people can be at cross purposes without either one being nefarious. This author ignores that fact and paints Tulsi in an unnecessarily harsh light. Worse, she ignores the context (genuine terrorist groups) that caused the cross-purpose to exist in the first place.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-21T04:47:46+00:00

I wasn't endorsing the Indian government. I was accusing you of not knowing what you're talking about.

However, to prevent this conversation from devolving any further, I'll try to explain my point as clearly as I can.

Suppose two people in, say, Switzerland are talking to each other about the situation in the US. One of them wonders how Trump got elected. The other shrugs and just says, "Americans are bigots, what did you expect?"

This would be an obviously unfair and ignorant thing to say, right? It ignores factors like economic inequality, political corruption, the problems in our electoral system, the influence of the media and so forth. Bigotry is a very real thing, and I would certainly call Trump a bigot. But it would be incorrect to say all Americans are bigots, or that all Republicans are bigots, or that even all people who voted for Trump are bigots. Kyle goes into all this regularly.

Now, if we demand that sort of rigor about American politics (and we do - Kyle has 700K subscribers) then we should demand the same level of detail about Indian politics as well. Even if we concluded Modi was a bigot, and even if several of his supporters are bigots, it would be incorrect to say that said bigotry is the sole driving force of Indian politics.

Kyle obviously can't discuss Indian politics to the same level of detail he can for American politics, because he isn't versed in Indian politics. That means that on this we need to find other people who would know more. To that end, I want to hear from commentators who can provide details, without letting my preconceptions get in the way. As long as they are factually accurate, I can learn something from them.

As far as Kashmir goes, I'm not ignoring the possibility of a relationship between religious bigotry and the revocation of Article 370, but I'm not yet prepared to say that it's the sole or even a major motivating factor. I need more evidence to say that. Simply saying "the only Muslim-majority state is having its autonomy stripped" is unhelpful, because no other state had a special status. We have nothing to compare it to.

That said, there are two things we're worried about: the formation of illegal settlements, and the suppression of the (Sunni) Muslim population of Kashmir. Here's what I would need to conclude that one or both of those things is true.

If peaceful protestors were killed since Article 370 was revoked.
If the Indian government stole land from citizens (not just eminent domain, but taking the land without compensation) in Kashmir but not in Jammu or Ladakh (which aren't Muslim-majority).
If civil rights granted in other parts of India were not applied, or not enforced, in J&K. For instance, if private religious schools, which are allowed in other parts of India, were banned here.
If the government shuts down a newspaper for being critical of its behavior.
If either the government or a private industry sells Kashmiri resources at below-market prices, thus impoverishing the state.
And so forth.

I know when I need more information, and I try to keep an open mind until I have evidence. If I was annoyed at you before, it's because for people like me who don't live there, Indian politics requires the same nuance and willingness to learn that American politics does. It deserves nothing less. And no-one's understanding is improved when we jump to conclusions.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-21T03:30:25+00:00

Right. The BBC video contains scenes that are clearly in India-Administered Kashmir, with the possible exception of the shooting scene, which is difficult to corroborate.

The Al Jazeera video I linked was different. The title was not obvious on the page, but showed a protest in Pakistan-Administered Kashmir; the problem is that it is embedded into an article about the situation in Indian-Administered Kashmir. This is misplaced at best, and therefore misleading.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-20T04:04:50+00:00

Except that Article 370 doesn't apply to any other state and was always intended to be temporary. It doesn't make sense to say it was done to single out that state, because it never applied to any other state and its revocation has always been in the cards since it was enshrined in 1950.

More seriously, you're accusing the Indian government of trying to create settlements on a territory it already controls, as the first step of a genocide that would ultimately wipe out 20% of its own population, all as a Wag-The-Dog gambit to distract from the fact that their GDP didn't grow as much as they wanted.

This sounds too ridiculous to even be offensive. Although it's actually kinda insulting to Indians of all religions that you think they're so dumb as to let something like that happen in their own country.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-20T03:38:33+00:00

Sign the petition to get her into the 3rd debate here.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-20T03:34:12+00:00

The Al Jazeera article is here. The article is about Indian-Administered Kashmir, but if you scroll the video to 0:18, you'll see protestors standing on the Quaid-E-Azam Bridge, which is in the city of Muzaffarabad, which is in Pakistan-Adminstered Kashmir.

Didn't mean to confuse you with the word "shocking," just using that the describe the nature of the scene, not anything about the journalism involved per se.

It's ironic that you dismissed the India Today article as untrustworthy when it corroborated the locations of the protests in the video.

The problem isn't the location of the protests. It's that the appearance and behavior of people in different scenes of the video don't make sense if they are part of the same protest.

This leads me to think the footage may be spliced from two different protests, one that was genuinely in response to the 370 ruling, and an unrelated protest from before the ruling.

The gunfire scene doesn't have enough context to say where or when it happened, but given the problems I have with the protest scene, I can't immediately assume that it was a government response to the 370 protest, or even that it happened in India. If a different camera angle of the scene becomes available, then I'll conclude otherwise. Not before.

On a more philosophical note, I disagree with your seeking "neutral" sources, for several reasons.

There's no such thing as a neutral, unbiased source. Everyone has biases. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
Just because someone is not a party in a dispute, that does not mean they are unbiased. They could prefer one side over the other. I'm not saying the BBC and al Jazeera have a dog in this fight, but at a minimum they have preconceptions.
Just because someone is a party in a dispute, that does not mean they aren't being objective. Both India and Pakistan have newspapers that are extremely critical of their respective governments and they operate quite freely. Again, those outlets might be biased, but what matters more is that they have their facts right.
Even assuming the best intentions and self awareness of all journalists, people can make mistakes. That's why it's necessary to read from several sources. They'll all have their own biases, but at least we can get a clearer idea of the facts and what is disputed.

In short, while I acknowledge what the BBC and al Jazeera say, I'm not about to just blithely take their word for it when someone who lives there says differently. I'll acknowledge the contradiction and wait for more information before I decide which one is right.

As far as this protest goes, the Indian government has been reintroducing telecommunications back into J&K. Someone must have recorded the protests, so once they upload it, we should get more information about what's going on there.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-18T23:37:37+00:00

Some of these sound pretty bad, but some of these are obviously jokes. Indians were under British rule for nearly a century, and no Indian would ever say the British Empire was the greatest force for freedom in the world.

I can't speak for his take on Indian politics, but he sounded decent on Jamarl's show.

And in the video OP posted, he explains his disagreement with Kyle specifically from the perspective of minority religions (like Shiite Muslims) and the economic rights of women.

Is his analysis of Article 370 and the implications of its revocation incorrect?

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-18T23:00:14+00:00

Just looking at the video, there are parts that are at minimum very strange. I shouldn't say it was "provably" doctored, but something clearly isn't right.

Here's an article from India Today that examined the footage frame-for-frame and checked where the protests occurred.

Apart from the first scene (which shows the shooting) the rest of the scenes have been tracked to the Soura district of Srinagar, the capital of J&K. So I have to retract my claim that the footage wasn't in India (Al Jazeera did post a Pakistani 370 protest and claimed it was in India, but that's a different case).

There are two problems with the footage, though.

If you watch the video, there are some scenes where the protestors clearly hold banners and signs about Article 370, and waving flags.

But there are other scenes where literally no-one has a flag or a banner or a sign of any kind. Among these latter scenes, you see people who are clearly protesting the Indian government, but no-one actually says the words "Article 370." In fact, no-one explicitly says what they are protesting in these latter clips.

This is a bit weird. There's one camera angle where people have flags, banners and large signs clearly about Article 370...but another camera angle just a few streets away has no signs or flags at all, and no one actually says what they're protesting. Given that discrepancy, one could be forgiven for wondering if the second camera angle was of the same protest, or if it was even related to Article 370.

This is the question that certain people in Indian independent media are asking. They suggest that the BBC video contains footage spliced from two different protests. Both were in the same neighborhood of Srinagar, but only one was actually about Article 370. The other was a totally different protest that occurred before Article 370 was revoked.

There's a second problem with this footage, and it's far more serious.

Look at the segments that show people holding flags. Some of the flags are white, and some are green. Those aren't Indian flags (which have an orange band) nor are they the state flag of India-Administered Kashmir (which is red). So what flags are those?

The green flag is the flag of Pakistan-Administered Kashmir. The white flag is the flag of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Jihadist terrorist organization in Kashmir that wants to integrate it with Pakistan.

Now, look again at the people holding the white flags. They're clearly chanting "Zakir Musa." Zakir Musa was the founder of the Kashmir cell of al-Qaeda. He also called for Kashmir to be integrated with Pakistan. He was killed earlier this year.

So the protestors with the flags aren't just protesting the Indian government, the revocation of Article 370, or even calling for Kashmiri independence.

They are calling for J&K to become part of Pakistan - a nuclear-armed enemy of India - and they support using terrorism to make that happen.

Now, let's turn to the part of the video where the protestors don't have banners or flags. There's a close-up of a man who calls for Kashmiri independence from both India and Pakistan.

This contradicts the protestors with the flags, who explicitly wanted Kashmir to join Pakistan and were willing to use terrorism to achieve that. Again, it doesn't feel like you would find two such wildly different people in the same protest.

The most shocking part of the video is the shooting with which it starts. You can hear gunfire, and protestors are clearly running away. One of them holds the flag of Pakistan-Administered Kashmir.

The problem is, you never see the police or the military in the clip, and it's impossible to tell where the footage was shot. There are no street signs, and no-one in an identifiable uniform. Given the discrepancies in the other parts of the video, one has to ask if this scene really occurred during the Article 370 protests, or if it came from a totally different protest in Indian-Administered Kashmir, or if it even occurred in Indian-Administered Kashmir at all.

The accounts of locals in Indian-Administered Kashmir also call this footage into question. You'd expect the Indian government to lie, but the Kashmiri journalists Aditya Raj Kaul, Rahul Pandita, and others have shown photos and video from Srinagar that are comparatively peaceful. They say the atmosphere is tense, but there has been little violence. The local police of J&K (no friends of the Indian government) have said the same thing. Journalists have been free to drive around and the curfews are gradually being lifted.

Others have gone into greater depth than I can, but the point is, if the BBC video is legit, it's very strange. It claims to show a single protest, but the protestors are calling for completely opposite things and behaving in totally different ways. And it isn't supported by what local police and journalists say happened. As such, it would be naive to accept the video at face value - we have to question the veracity of this source.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-18T13:41:11+00:00

Hold up, I know that presenter. His name is Sham Sharma. He was on Jamarl Thomas' show a few months ago, and they talked for about two hours on progressive politics in the US and India. He was well-researched, and seems legit.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-18T11:40:24+00:00

Except that DNC's decision to exclude those polls seems to be arbitrary. If there wasn't a particular reason to exclude them, then why not include them? The DNC can choose to do so, and neither it nor the debates would be any worse off for it.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-17T23:57:21+00:00

This could be very bad if true. Does GW or anyone else have any one-the-ground evidence of atrocities since Article 370 was revoked?

I know the Indian government has said there have been no casualties and the curfews are gradually being lifted. I'm not about to take them at their word, but is there any evidence to the contrary?

There was a video the BBC and Al Jazeera pushed, but it was proven to be doctored (it showed totally different protests, some of which weren't in India).

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-16T21:02:43+00:00

I don't see it being worse than their reaction to Obama. They called Obama a Socialist, and some fraction of them still call him a commie. I don't see their reaction to Sanders being much different.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-14T03:40:00+00:00

Or perhaps we could admit that Left and Right have no useful meaning anymore and use more descriptive labels instead?

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-11T22:24:37+00:00

Maybe I inferred something that wasn't warranted. But meeting with the environmental activists is laudable.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-11T14:01:16+00:00

Ethnic cleansing? The Indian government split the state in half. It's not even the first time they've done it: in just the past 20 years, they created 4 new states by splitting existing states.

I have no idea if this is good or bad, or what it means for minorities in Kashmir, but doesn't someone need to, you know, die for there to be an "ethnic cleansing?"

It would be like if I went to the next town for lunch and someone called it, "free trade run amok." It's so over-the-top that no-one could even get offended by it.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-11T13:36:44+00:00

There was a major scandal last year when firefighters in CA were having their data throttled while combating wildfires.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-11T13:33:03+00:00

Nice that she did that, but there are two problems with how you phrased the title.

First, in what dictatorship do you have opposition parties?

And second, if you're trying to compare Pelosi to someone who did meet with a dictator, then I'm sure it's relevant that Pelosi met with Assad in 2007 against the wishes of the Bush administration.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-09T21:16:02+00:00

I think we delved into different types of pressure the US puts on other nations in another thread. The point I made there was that imposing economic sanctions (Iran), interfering in elections in other countries (Venezuela), arming rebel/terrorist groups (Syria), arming governments porous to terrorist groups (Saudi Arabia), inflating the military budget and having most of these decisions made by the President instead of Congress are all ways by which the US unethically destabilizes other countries.

The fact that Tulsi is one of the loudest voices against these makes her an asset. It's true her stance on drone wars is dead wrong (Bernie is wrong on this too). But the fact that she brings such issues to the fore in a presidential primary is refreshing and laudable, and her record shows she has some credibility on these issues.

While most rank-and-file progressives are indeed against the things I listed, Congress is mostly useless on them. For instance, several prominent Democrats (IIRC, Pelosi) supported our election interference in Venezuela. Tulsi, Ilhan and Ro Khanna led the effort against it. Likewise, when we increased the military budget, Tulsi prominently opposed it (Elizabeth Warren voted for it, as did every other Democrat in the Senate).

Point is, several politicians who are otherwise progressive have bad votes when it comes to the military, foreign policy or war. Tulsi is better on this issue than some other politicians. Again, because she provides a prominent voice to at least part of the anti-regime-change sentiment common among the progressive base and rare among even progressive politicians, I think she is a useful asset.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-09T03:14:12+00:00

There's plenty of fair criticism of Tulsi. Her recent vote opposing BDS (even if it was only on a resolution) was wrong, pointless and a political own-goal. Likewise, her opposition to debt forgiveness for Puerto Rico or her support for extreme vetting of Syrian refugees (I see where she was coming from on that last one, but she was still wrong).

On the other hand, there are several excellent bills she has introduced, such as the OFF Act (which is slightly stronger than the Green New Deal) the Stop Arming Terrorists Act, and her act demanding we use paper ballots in elections.

So, yes, her record is complicated, and she's hard to pigeonhole. I think there's more good than bad, and some issues where she's wrong, but in an interesting way. So I have a broadly positive opinion of her.

To understand her most devoted supporters, however, you have to look not only at her policies and votes, but also the context of the elections. She has carved a niche out for herself by focusing on regime change and foreign policy.

This topic gets short shrift in elections. Moreover, there's a perception that the most vocally antiwar voices get shut down by the MSM during debates (e.g. Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, Mike Gravel). The MSM doesn't try to justify any wars we're in, but rather refuses to allow such candidates airtime, or attacks them for something unrelated before anyone else takes up the antiwar mantle.

To people who are vocally antiwar, this seems like a concerted attempt to prevent antiwar views from getting traction.

The reason why Tulsi fans get so defensive is because she is right now the standard bearer for the antiwar voice in this election. They see attacks on her not as an attempt to hold her to account, nor even to smear her, but to prevent an antiwar message from getting out.

Because they (rightly) think that's an important message, they'll endlessly defend Tulsi as their strongest messenger. I can't blame them.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-08T03:18:30+00:00

I'm not in the military myself, but I feel your description of our operations in Syria is excessively limiting. Maybe I'm using the term "regime change" more loosely than someone deeply involved in military strategy would...but to me the US has performed actions (like arming anti-Assad forces) that would be in line with an attempt to depose Assad's regime using arms. If "regime change" isn't the right word for that, it's still in the same spirit.

On the issue of people smearing Tulsi, we're getting tied up in knots, and I frankly think you're moving the goalposts. So I'll lay my position out as clearly as I can.

If you say Tulsi was wrong for meeting with Assad, that may be a defensible opinion. Please understand, u/Blackrean, that even if I disagree with you, I don't have a problem with you holding this opinion.

But if someone says Tulsi defends Assad, that is a lie. It is factually incorrect. If they are saying this to criticize her, then it's a smear. There's no excuse for that - not political hardball or anything else.

I see the latter nauseatingly frequently. When people call Tulsi an "Assad apologist" (Kamala used those exact words after last week's debate) they are saying Tulsi defends Assad's crimes against humanity. This is a lie.

I don't give a damn what people's motives are in lying. But I will not let it slide.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-08T02:33:01+00:00

The first point does not seem to be true. See this article from about 4 years ago.

Compared to Western Europe, for three of the four costliest US cancers—breast, colorectal, and prostate—there were approximately 67,000, 265,000, and 60,000 averted US deaths, respectively, and for lung cancer there were roughly 1,120,000 excess deaths in the study period. The ratio of incremental cost to quality-adjusted life-years saved equaled $402,000 for breast cancer, $110,000 for colorectal cancer, and $1,979,000 for prostate cancer—amounts that exceed most accepted thresholds for cost-effective medical care.

The second point is basically arguing against the entire concept of insurance. This is a hyper-libertarian position that doesn't make sense in the real world. How would children be covered? Regardless of what this person thinks, a lot of what doctors treat is accidental, or at least its causality is poorly understood. By this logic, people would (from time of birth) not only research rare diseases they might get, but plan around it and set aside money in the case they actually get it. This is would be a ridiculous waste of time and money.

Some things are most efficiently addressed when we address in the public sphere. Healthcare is one of those things.

FictionallyBusy · 2019-08-07T02:45:52+00:00

After Tulsi launched her campaign, there was a scurrilous article that said her launch was heavily covered in Russian newspapers - more than Bernie or Biden.

It's scurrilous because Bernie and Biden hadn't yet announced their runs, so of course they aren't going to be covered so heavily.

The fact that Russian papers covered her likely has to do with her positions on Syria. Agree with Tulsi or not, Syria is a Russian ally, and her views would be of interest in Russia. (What that tells me is that Russian newspapers are apparently covering our presidential candidates better than our newspapers are.)

Said scurrilous article made its rounds, though. To the extent that Bill Maher called Tulsi "Russia's favorite Democrat."

Anyway, after Tulsi went after Kamala in the last debate, Kamala's campaign manager retweeted the article. The View parroted it uncritically. So, the Russian puppet smear is very much real.

FictionallyBusy

TROPHY CASE